UX Designer living in San Francisco, with a background in Industrial Design, Retail, and Museum Exhibition Design.

Target Open House

Since 2014 I have been part of Target's Technology Innovation Team in San Francisco. While there, I conceived of the idea to create a dedicated store to showcase smart products. The goal was both to inspire and educate the guest, about this new category of exciting yet complicated products, and for Target to learn how best to display them.

Within retail stores products typically rely on packaging design to tell their story. Smart products, however, are complicated to understand at first, in terms of their value proposition and how they work, and therefore can't rely on their packaging alone to convey their purpose within a glance as someone walks by in-store. So we built a dedicated store for these products, with an acrylic house inside it, to show these products off the shelf, outside of a box, and in context of a living environment.

For the experience we focused on daily use-cases on how these products can fit into, and enhance your life, instead of their tech features. Using the translucency of the acrylic walls, we projected narratives featuring smart products onto them. For example, when you wake up in the morning, your coffee can start brewing and your smart speaker can tell you about the weather and traffic conditions. Or various products can jump into action to protect your home when a burglary happens while you are away!

Open House has influenced smart product displays in other Target stores

Target Open House 2.0

18 months after opening Target Open House in San Francisco we refreshed the space. As creative lead for the refresh, I took learnings from observations, feedback, and metrics to guide our priorities and focus.

We made the space work better for our weekly events by making all the furniture movable, we created a dedicated "Garage" area for pre-sale products from early stage startups, and created an experience in the acrylic house that guests could personalize by choosing from 75 different storylines.

Based on the visitors personal selection only the most relevant products and features are described to the guest. The themes all relate to different aspects of lifestyles. For example, the busy parent in you, you as a frequent traveller, or the aspiring gourmet chef within you. The hope is that by making an emotional connection with the stories, the guest will care more about the narratives, and will consequently also form an emotional connection with the products.

Immersive house with 75 stories to personalize the experience

Guests can try out the products and native apps in the Playground area

The Garage area for pre-sale products from early stage startups

MOB

MOB was an event discovery app I created for Hatch Labs - the incubator where Tinder came from. Hatch Labs was closed down in December of 2012 by its parent company IAC. Unfortunately, that meant after only running for three months, MOB had to be removed from the app store.

MOB stood for Moments Outside the Box. It was a platform for ad hoc experiences to bring people together in the community.

With a team of two, an engineer and myself, I took on the role of product manager as well as UX and UI designer.

This is how PSFK described the app experience:"Because of the simple interface, it takes 20 seconds or less to start a MOB. To set up an event, users open the app, pick a time and a place, and then glide through their iPhone contacts to email their friends the MOB invite. Event posts can be continually edited after they have been published. Users looking to join a MOB can search for happenings based on location or start time. Results appear in a gallery view or can also be shown using a map interface, which informs users of the distance to nearby MOBs."

Mobile App for Spontaneous Group Gatherings

Final App - Grid View

Final App - Map View

Final App - Post a MOB Screen

Press: Fast Company Article Featuring MOB

Flow Diagrams

Wire Frames

Design Iterations - Map View

Design Iterations - Name Your MOB

Magscapes

Magscapes is the world's first magnetic wallpaper - hang it like ordinary wallpaper and then stick magnets on it. My patented invention has been used in kid's interiors, hotels, at conferences, and in architects bureaus.

Clients included: Habitat (UK retailer) who commissioned me to fabricate two custom Magscapes products for their stores - a height chart, with magnetic animal markers, and a map of the world with magnetic flags. I designed the prints, magnet designs, and packaging, and had everything manufatured in China.

Qube

The Qube is a modular piece of furniture. A tactile object that can be stacked to build display cases, storage shelves, room dividers, or be used as extra seating.

Light, flexible, and robust furniture, that will last, and evolve with people's lifestyle.

I designed the Qube, and had it manufactured in the UK using rotation moulding. Over the period of 5 years I sold over 15,000 units, both through retailers and directly to consumers.

The Qube was featured in publications such as: Elle Decoration, Vogue, GQ, Esquire, Evening Standard, The Guardian.

Retailers included: Selfridges, The Conran Store, Aria, Casa Shop.

Palazzo

The first ever flat-pack chandelier.

Made out of ten pieces of durable lightweight acrylic, slotted together in a few minutes. The instantly glamorous centre piece can be used indoors or outdoors.

Photoville

I was commissioned by the Magnum Foundation to design two installations featuring work by Bruce Gilden and Sim Chi Yin.

The exhibits were part of Photoville, an annual NYC festival with a modular venue built from re-purposed shipping containers.

La Ruta

In collaboration with Working Theater, Magnum Foundation presented a cross-disciplinary installation and immersive theater experience of Ed Cardona Jr.’s play La Ruta. Staged within the walls of a moving semi-truck, participants were exposed to the harrowing journey of immigrants smuggled across the border into the United States.

I was fortunate enough to be commissioned to design an accompanying exhibit showcasing the work of both Magnum photographers and emerging voices supported through Magnum Foundation fellowships.

Smokeys

I was asked to design a burger restaurant in Vienna, Austria. Two years later I was commisioned to design their second location.

Interscopia

Viewing through a microscope apparent microbes come to life, until you realize that a projection of yourself is projected onto the tiny specimen slide, via a pico projected.

Personal project made in collaboration with Tamar Ziv.

Interscopia

Potted Data

A mechanical plant analyses your emails and responds to the language use in your messages. Positive words and sentiments make the plant happy and healthy, while negative emails make the plant wilt.